Scanning and Transcription Services

Description

Further to a Prior Information Notice (PIN) ref: CF-0268300D58000000L5A4EAK1 issued on 31 August 2022, the Secretary of State for the Home Department (hereafter referred to as the Authority) is undertaking this tender exercise to appoint suitably capable and experienced provider of Scanning and Transcription services for HMPO General Register Office (GRO) of England and Wales. The GRO delivers a range of civil registration services. Since 2008, the GRO has been part of what is now HMPO, itself a directorate of the Authority. The Director General of HMPO is also the Registrar General for England and Wales. The records held by GRO constitute the national record of births, deaths, marriages, civil partnerships and other registration events (Records), since civil registration started in 1837. The Records are held in a variety of formats, including paper certificates, bound paper books, microfiche, microfilm, whilst some are already digitised. However, these digital Records are not searchable. GRO has a statutory obligation to hold, maintain and provide public access to these Records. However, there is a current reliance on equipment that is disappearing from the commercial market altogether, with Records in their current format degrading, which brings significant risk to GRO being able to meet its statutory functions. This opportunity will be operated in line with the Restricted Procedure, a multi-stage procurement process that is intended to short list qualified bidders, who will in turn be invited to tender for the contract opportunity. The objective of the Selection Stage is to assess the responses to the Standard Selection Questionnaire (SQ) and select Bidders to proceed to the ITT Stage of this procurement. The evaluation panel shall evaluate the SQ responses using the selection criteria detailed in the SQ document, which is provided on the Authority’s e-sourcing portal. Bidders who pass this SQ assessment will then be invited to tender. Lot 1: Aims and Objectives of the Programme The GRO wishes to transform and modernise its existing service provision to the public and other government departments by scanning and transcribing the Records, due to: • operational and technical challenges; • the increased cost, complexity, and obsolescence risk of maintaining legacy systems; and • the current structure hindering the GRO’s ability to efficiently deliver services, both internally and externally. The GRO wishes to keep pace with the market, and ensure we are taking advantage of the new technologies including, but not limited to, AI and machine learning. Looking to the future, the volume and variety of Records that the GRO needs to manage is increasing significantly and managing them effectively and securely to support its business objectives has become increasingly complex. The GRO believes that the Services will enable it to create, handle and protect digital information more efficiently, and will also significantly facilitate and improve the delivery of services to the general public and other government departments. Therefore, the Authority has established the Programme to enable the GRO to meet its objectives and is seeking a Bidder to deliver and support the Programme’s objectives. This will involve a transformation of the way that the GRO accesses Records and how it shares the information contained within them. This will not only require the delivery of the Service, but also require transformation of business processes and the (re)deployment of tools and resources that support these processes. The Authority expects the Bidder to deliver the Service following implementation and to drive continuous improvement with the goal of reducing the reliance on human intervention in the process and enabling the Authority to reduce costs. The Authority is seeking to appoint a Bidder to deliver the Services. The Bidder needs to be able to meet the Authority’s requirements and must be capable of delivering highly secure and complex Services for a contract term of five (5) years. The Authority expects the Bidder to deliver the following capabilities: • Record Handling Process: Authority; • Scanning Process; • Transcription Process; • Data Management Process; and • Quality Assurance Process.